Still Learning
by the missing x
Summary: Under the protection of Chris Argent, Artemis Qiang has to learn to adjust quickly to her new life in Beacon Hills after escaping the clutches of the Calaveras. But starting freshman year in high school will be the last of her problems. Learning how to hunt in a new environment with Argent, learning how to make friends, learning that the hunt wasn't all about the kill. She'd learn.


Her life had been going so well.

Okay- lie.

But it was decent.

She had people, she had her life and she had support. (Also a partial lie)

And now with one little screw up it had been taken away from her.

It had been one surveillance mission; watch the Calaveras and report back in a week's time. But in the first second of arriving in Mexico it had been like they had known she was coming, locking her up in a cell surrounded by four cement walls, bringing her food and water through a small cat flap in the corner.

She was left alone in the dark with her thoughts, slowly going crazy in prison as she could hear laughter outside her room. The guards that were in charge of feeding her were always talking about her, in English so she'd understand.

_'Girls, am I right?'_

_'No wonder she got caught, she's just a kid.'_

_'I wonder if she'd dead yet.'_

_'Why would they keep her alive in here? She's nothing but a stupid girl.'_

Each time a comment was made she carved another line into the wall with her only knife left, tallying the amount of times she needed to slice through their flesh. By the first week the lower half of the wall was covered in tally marks, taunting her. Maybe she was doomed to live the rest of her life here.

Every week Araya, the leader, would walk through a door, and question her. The first time she had tried to attack, but was tasered down onto the floor, on her knees in front of the devil. She dropped the knife in her hand and spat on her shoes. That was the first time she had ever seen Araya. The old lady would continue to sit in the chair each week, asking her questions that she never responded to.

In her fourth week of imprisonment she was broken free, it had happened so fast she hadn't realized what was happening until they were in a car on the way out of Mexico. There was a silence for those long minutes before she decided to let her mouth run again, voice hoarse from the lack of water and the fact that she hadn't spoken in four weeks.

"Just because the Calaveras' don't know about you taking me into America doesn't mean that they won't find out." The girl said. Almond shaped eyes flickering back to the side mirrors of the car. Her black hair falling in front of her face as she tapped her finger impatiently on the side of the vehicle.

"I know." Chris said through gritted teeth. "Do you want to get away from them or not?"

"I do, but don't you think it's a bit stupid? Bringing me to Beacon Hills?" She asked, "Not that I don't want to go there, just that it's the first place they'll look."

"You'll be safe there. You know how to handle yourself don't you?" He smiled reassuringly.

"Of course I know how to take care of myself, do you think that the masters would have sent me there if they didn't think that I couldn't?" She snapped, glaring at the road ahead. "Well, I got caught anyway. What the hell do the Calaveras want with me anyway, it's not like I was tracking their shipment supplies or anything?"

Chris sighed and gripped the steering wheel tighter. "I was kind of hoping you would tell me that."

"Do you even know my name?" She asked narrowing her eyes and turning to facing him, "I mean you got me out of that horrible cell, thanks- by the way, but do you know my name?"

"Artemis Qiang. Fifteen years old, Chinese, no parents, raised by the masters of your village, sent to Mexico for something that wasn't specified to me. Occupation: Hunter." He listed off; Artemis just widened her eyes in surprise and then glared at him.

"So you know who I am, but I don't know who you are." She grumbled, "Care to share?"

"Chris Argent." He said.

"Oh," she smiled, "Hunter. This makes so much more sense. Brother of Kate Argent, father to Allison Argent, husband to Victoria Argent, son to Gerard Argent. Most of who are dead. What were you doing in Mexico, because I'm assuming it wasn't for a family holiday?"

Maybe it was the glance that she gave him, that made him feel like she was staring into his soul, but he felt like that this girl would corner him and used mind games to get him to spill his darkest secrets. But he shook his head, whoever Artemis really was, her personality, was probably a bloodthirsty killer. Which was why he was bringing her to Beacon Hills, where he could keep and eye on her and where there were people that he could enlist to help stop her if it came down to that.

From what her masters had said, this girl was the youngest hunter they had had in a long time. There were no limitations to her abilities. As the only female hunter in her village she was one of the most feared in their region, known for her adaptability, lack of mercy or worry for her victims. The elders of the village had renamed her Artemis, hunter of the moon, at an early age. Because every full moon she was out in the forest protecting her village with some of the other hunters, fighting off animals, creatures, werewolves.

He guessed that the best way to go was to keep her options limited.

"I'd prefer to keep it to myself." He said, looking straight at the road ahead of them.

"If you have to, where are you taking me?" She asked, leaning back and putting her feet up, the buckles on her boots reflecting the streetlights. She felt at a loss, she had no secure way of contacting her home fast enough, and she had no way of getting back. And she was putting her hope into one man.

"You're going to be living with me." He grunted, making a sharp right onto another seemingly endless street.

"You're kidding me right?" She breathed, "That's the stupidest idea I've ever heard."

"Do you know the reason why I was there to save you in the first place?" He snapped, baring his teeth.

"I thought it was because you were working for the skull loving son of a bitc-"

"Because your masters had asked me to." Argent said, cutting off her sentence. Artemis slowly moved her head to face him and smirked.

"They did, did they?"

"Once they got word of your imprisonment they sent a messenger to me. Asking me to get you out of there."

"That doesn't explain why you're taking me to live with _you_." She said.

The man breathed in and sighed, "He wants me to make sure you're safe here, with me, and he's letting some other hunters take over your mission."

Artemis hissed, "I knew it. Who was the messenger?"

"I don't know." Chris said, keeping his eyes trained on the road.

She sat up. "Describe him."

Artemis guessed that if it was the messenger that it was then only one of the masters would have had knowledge of her capture and disappearance, the others thinking that she was simply lost in a foreign land and would find her way back home.

"I don't know, it was dark."

"You're used to seeing in the dark, Argent." She smiled sweetly, her eyes glaring daggers at him. "So I'll ask again, and if you fail to answer me I will throw this knife," she said, holding up a silver knife, "into the person sitting in the car behind us. At the speed we're going I don't think it'll take very long for him to be in a lot of pain. So I'm asking you to tell me. Describe the messenger."

Argent scrunched up his face in frustration and looked at Artemis, who was poised with the knife in her hand and the window rolled down. "He was asian, a small beard, shorter than you, dressed in a tux, holding a gun."

"Good." She said, tucking the knife back into her boot and pressing the button for the window to roll up after she had rolled it down. "I know who sent you to me. He works for one of the masters, incidentally, the only master who hates my guts."

"I thought you were good?" He sneered, enjoying her quite anger. He had tried to be patient with this girl, but no matter what she did, she always managed to piss him off greatly. And he had only met her in the morning.

"I am." She glared, "But _Master_ Cao thinks I would be better suited for working in the kitchen, where my mother and grandmother have worked since birth. He's the only one who doesn't like me because he's a pompous ass who thinks that girls should be cooking and cleaning and that the guys should be hunting and protecting."

"Sounds like you two don't get along." He mumbled.

"You don't say." She grumbled, folding her hands over her chest.

"Why aren't the woman hunters?" he asked. Most families that hunted lived by the same guidelines, the women were the leaders, and the men were the warriors. But it meant that the women had to learn how to hunt to lead a hunt. But in very few places it was the men that were the warriors and the leaders, the women forced behind to stay and wait for their returns.

"Didn't you listen? He thinks that we're not suited for it, that the males are stronger, faster, _better _than we are." She growled.

"How did you learn how to fight then?" Argent asked.

"I was taught by some of the other masters, the one's who saw something in me. Cao had no idea about it, and I didn't intend him to." Artemis admitted.

"It sounds like you didn't really have a normal childhood."

Artemis laughed bitterly, feeling the frustration of being locked up for so long leave her. Ranting to this man she met when he broke her out of prison.

"There is no such thing as a 'normal childhood'. There is no ideal way to grow up in this world. Life throws something at you and you have to learn to adapt, and _fast_. Because if you're the last one in the woods on the full moon with no weapons and you get lost following the river, you need to learn how to survive. My childhood was normal- it is normal. Just different from the one you gave to Allison."

"Don't talk about her like you know her." He said in a dead tone.

She sighed, and stayed silent, knowing that it probably wasn't the best subject to bring up when he was the one that could leave you on the street. When news of her death had reached their village they had held a silence for an hour, hunters are family, and when family die you grieve.

She couldn't say the same for the Calaveras; they seemed to go outside of their precious code, killing innocent humans with gunfire in the streets of Mexico. That was the reason she had been shipped from China to Mexico overnight. The Calaveras represented something to some of the hunting families, danger, selfishness,_ death_.

Legends, even before the current forerunner of the group, the Calaveras had always been known as the 'rouge' family, which is the reason that they were normally left alone. But their hunting village had always been one of the exceptions.

Being so remote and out on their own they didn't rely on other hunting families, because they got by on their own. So when the news of the Calaveras came up she was confused as to why she was the one sent on the mission, and then later on her flight found out that it was Cao who asked if it would be assigned to her.

She should have realized that something was up then, she should have acknowledged and not let herself get her hopes up because Cao was somewhat of a slippery snake, cunning, fast, _ugly_, and poisonous. Once he taught you his ways, there was no going back.

She looked out the window and relaxed in her seat, looking out at the lights of a city far away in the distance. She felt her eyes get heavier and heavier, and eventually let them fall. The last thing she heard was the continuous rolling of the tires underneath her.

The last thing she saw was the bright light in the sky, the moon that was nearly full.

...

**A/N: So hi. Thanks for reading the story. I didn't really know about how this was going to turn out and I've had this idea for quite some time now. And it's been really awesome just writing and writing. **

**It would be really nice if you left a review just so I know how you feel about the story so far. :)**

**Thanks a bagillion :)**


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